Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed has identified major areas as key sectors for investment

Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed says efforts are being made to improve business environment.

By Winsley Masese

The Government has identified three key areas to receive a substantial amount of investment to unlock the country’s manufacturing potential.

Industrialisation and Enterprise Development Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed identified the textile, leather and agro-processing sectors that the country has as a competitive edge but that remain untapped.

“There are raw materials, labour and skills, and markets for the three. This could be used to assist the economy to grow,” he said.

He said although the country produces a significant amount of leather, about 90 per cent of it is exported. “We are saying this should not be allowed to happen since majority of the shoes are imported from Ethiopia,” he said.

Addressing the media in Nairobi yesterday, he said about seven per cent of international trade is in manufacturing, adding, “If we cannot fix the issues, we cannot achieve the targets.”

Mr Mohamed said the ministry has carried out mapping of the key areas that need improving and will focus on them in the near future.

“We have all the issues put together to achieve the deliverables mostly to be achieved by the parastatals,” he said. The CS argued that he has been working on new ways to improve the ministry’s participation in the country’s overall economic growth since the new government was formed.

Drive the growth

“We have been meeting as a government and looking at the sectors that can drive growth. We have had conversations and are getting somewhere,” he noted.

Mohamed said they have spent a lot of time having those conversations to make sure the landscape is right for doing business, and they are opening doors to fix issues.

“What we need is to focus as a ministry in the context of what our colleagues are doing,” he said, singling out current efforts by Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu as some of the reforms being undertaken to improve the ease of doing business in the country.

He regretted that attracting foreign investment to the country has been bogged down by corruption and the high cost of doing business.